ISSR and School of Social Science Seminar: Poverty and Ethnicity in the UK, Presented by Dr Lucinda Platt

Primary Information
Date:	Friday, 13 November 2009
Time:	2:30pm - 4:00pm
Room:	Room 816
UQ Location:	Michie Building (St Lucia)
Event Information
Description:	Child poverty is the subject of sustained analysis and an active policy agenda in the UK. Yet the contours and causes of child poverty as they vary with ethnicity are much less well understood. This is despite the fact that the raw differences in poverty between ethnic groups are dramatic: recent figures showed that a fifth of White children to a quarter of Black Caribbean and Indian children, a third of Black African children and over half of Pakistani and Bangladeshi children were poor. This paper sets out to enhance our understanding of ethnic group differences in child poverty, specifically examining the extent to which they can be attributed to differences in known ‘risk factors’ such as lone parenthood, workless families and large families across ethnic groups. Using a variety of data sources and a range of analytical approaches, and examining poverty transitions as well as cross-sectional poverty measures, the paper illuminates the specific poverty experience of children from different ethnic groups. It finds that the prevalence of family characteristics which are more vulnerable to poverty, particularly lone parenthood account in large part for the higher rates of poverty experienced by Black Caribbean and Black African children, though on some measures there is some additional ethnic penalty. Workless families and family composition contribute substantially to the very high poverty rates of Pakistani and Bangladeshi children but children from these groups still face much higher risks of poverty than otherwise comparable White children. And Indian children tend to live in families that are at lower risk of poverty. The fact that they nevertheless have significantly higher poverty rates than the majority is therefore perplexing. The paper concludes by reflecting on the limits of current child poverty policy for addressing the position of some of the UK’s poorest and most seriously disadvantaged children, and by attempting to account for the systematic exclusion of ethnicity from the child poverty debate. Presenter: Dr Lucinda Platt is Senior Lecturer in sociology at the Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex. Her research focuses on ethnic minorities and child poverty and she has published extensively in these areas. Lucinda leads on the ethnicity strand of the major UK household panel survey, Understanding Society.
Event Category:	Seminars & workshops / Public lectures /
Contact Information
Name:	Mr Mark Engelmann
Phone:	x57516
Email:	m.engelmann@uq.edu.au
Org. Unit:	Social Science
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Directions to St Lucia Campus, UQ Ipswich, and UQ Gatton.